202203261327 📃 valences of market desire, plan for the commune

¶1. Desire and the market have several valences which, considered from the standpoint of abstract thought, can be approached only in their summary relations. By this, I mean that I cannot approach one valence for itself, for it will always act for me in itself in contrast to the other valences demanding equal claim to selfhood (or being for themselves). Said otherwise, I cannot approach one valence as the whole, for I will encounter contradictions therein no matter how I act within it. These are the contradictions between the partiality of the valence and its claim to wholeness, or unconditionally conditioning other valences. It at most conditionally conditions - all valences interpenetrate. This is the “summary relation” of the valences - their mutual encounters and conditioning.

¶2. But what then is a market valence or a desire valence? Each conditions the other, and is a condition for the other. Beginning with the desire-market relation, desire’s valence summarily produces conditions for its fulfillment - it is the combining of objects by the force of want. The market, then, is the locus of want-concretion - it is where wants are fulfilled. In the life-world, want is merely objective as a having tangibly or univocally, so that want can be discussed without scruple. In the inmost depths of self, however, want is social and thereby existential. Only scientific consciousness attempts to investigate this. Now, considered from the market-desire relation, desire’s valence is a receptivity of market possibility - it actually buys what is only potentially buyable in the market. Hence, the market’s valence is a coordination of possible desires into concrete objects for purchase. This dialectic is that of consumers and producers considered from the vantage of abstract consciousness.

¶3. Now, these are SUMMARY valences, each of which can be analyzed further according to different tools of scientific consciousness — matter, form, mind, emotion, social proof, etc. We do this according to problematics, as Dewey and James have said. Yet, because these interpenetrate, we find that even this relation is beholden to a problematic condition and that they constitute scientific posits themselves. No life-world agent thinks of his dialectical relation to others - he merely does as he wills and allows all else to follow. Understanding this relation of unthinking performance is what some have called “worldly wisdom,” or the experience of knowing beforehand how life-world agents tend. Of course, this changes from one Foucaultian episteme to the next, such that the “wisdom” of one age is never that of the next. Some tendencies remain but, overall, most things are liable to change.

¶4. There is, then, a difference between a scientific writing-for and a worldly or life-world writing-for. The first uses all at its disposal to solve an issue; the second uses only what the life-world allows him. This latter form of writing is always more popular, for it works within the confines of popularity itself. Worldly wisdom is, in this way, essentially and necessarily popular - it does not think of the global how but only of the local what. It looks at what is before it, how it tends, then asks what it can do so as to enter into that as best it can. &nbspThis is the summary essence of market desire - to get the best one can&nbsp.

¶5. Scientific thinking does not want the best: it wants only the truth. The businessman (the life-world agent par excellence) execrates the scientist for his naivety; in his view, all is a getting ahead and getting above. Therefore, science is nothing but a getting ahead and above for the scientist, who hides behind the cover of truth. The businessman suspects all of this - theologians, philosophers, etc. He is suspicious to the core, and it is the essence of his work to be as such. For he has posed “getting the best” as his problematic - he frames all else according to it. Doing this, it is a priori necessary that all else fail to escape it.

¶6. Now, in our life-world, the business frame is the bear bottom, the bottommost thought wherewith any agent thinks. We could frame things otherwise; indeed, we may be successful in so doing. However, our ultimate success will in the last analysis depend on the business frame, or the business epistemology. This thinking permeates all and is the condition for success. This, once more, is a priori circular - this accounts FOR that success. &nbspFor, business epistemology is maximal coercion with minimal effort&nbsp. This is not abstractedly or scientifically, but in the sense of the life-world, or what any agent would understand to be as such. There is no “true” maximal coercion - there is only that coercion that an agent believes he can achieve in this or that locality; the same is true of minimal effort. Thus, scientific investigations into this are incoherent - they are already a part of and depend on the thing they investigate.

¶7. Thus, any public-facing object must coincide with this epistemology, for the epistemology of business is the epistemology of the public, at least in our life-world. A liberatory task is to bring this epistemology to its conclusions, a task which entails bringing forward its contradictions, tearing it asunder in the process. The “most true” business is that which affords exact desires, then; but this would be impossible, since desire is never exactly known, and to produce a product fulfilling desire is know how to produce it. Now, if we cannot do this, we are either doomed to repeat this epistemology or must find another means to sunder it. This end must be sought before we undertake any means, for any other means will be a mere repetition of the ontological conditions for it.

¶8. The final end in view is the Table of Minimal Desire, or a list of categories of products whose obtaining allows a man freedom of mind. Having this, we can order the market such that these minima are always secured; being secured, men can always abstain from the rest of the market and live peacefully or artfully. Such is the minimum condition for communism, our most final end in view. This view doesn’t sunder capitalism, however. Or does it? If we suppose the business that orders minimal, we sunder the competitor, and thereby the market. Here, then, is the final view - a business which, on its life-world conditions, upends them by securing that insecurity on which they are premised. This transforms the life-world and, thereby, capitalism itself. We might graph this as thus:

¶9. Now, to build this we require resources, namely, the resources of minds and the resources of materials. Mentally, we need (1) population and (2) knowledge. Materially, we require (1) bodies and (2) capital. We in the end want a sundering of capital, so that purchasing power becomes a choice rather than a compulsion. We could create an alternate fulfillment of needs outside of capital - that is the end goal. We must do this in several stages.

¶10. &nbspFirst&nbsp, we appeal to market desire or “business existentialism,” or the “worldly wisdom” that all men desire to get ahead and “achieve their goals.” We assist them in this by showing them how we have achieved our goals. &nbspSecond&nbsp, we expose the logics and histories of the business life-world. &nbspThird&nbsp, we use the capital (social and monetary) accrued hereby to order a set of organizations whose logics depend not on value quanta (capital itself), but on satisfactory alliances, or univocal agreements. This neo-bartering is a bartering only of time for time, where Smith’s view that time-labored to obtain is indexical to the value one invests. In this way, we retain the signifying capacity of money but, instead of its concrete-external univocal power, we sublimate it into man himself via ownmost existential attribute, his finite time allotted here on earth. Now, can a time-quantizing of labor and products be performed? We can only speculate, but we must attempt it. The bottommost issue here will be the security of food, clothing, and shelter outside of all such quantizing, or else we do not establish the minimum security we are after. Instead, we merely replace the discrete value quanta of money with the continuous value quanta of time - labor contracts to feed one’s family still remain. We want to upend this, and to to take up the bear necessities of life as factical guarantees. We can only do this through a kind of “club” or “association” model of mutual aid. As shown above, our organization would provide members with life-necessities gratis, provided that they maintain the life-living of the club itself.

¶10. This will demand a club existentialism, a club epistemology, and a club ontology. Instead of the maximin of business, which wants to obtain maximal discrete value quanta, we will establish a club maximin, or cunning, which wants to obtain minimal inroads into their continuous value quanta, time. We suspect most will do this through deceit, opportunism, and gangsterism - “if you do this for me, I can do this for you, despite what the organization hopes for.” This is because all men always see means towards their advantage against others and, even in cases of alleged security, will notice always loci of precarity and carve out of such precariousness a means towards their own ends. This is why most utopian plans fail - they fail to account for the existential primitiveness of precarity. The genius of business epistemology is that it depends on this primitiveness and takes it up as a condition analytically - it is that very precariousness, systematized into definite channels of behavior and desire. What we are after is the same, but with a view towards life guarantees. We do this secondary through our ideology, or our existentialism, epistemology, and ontology. Primarily, we must do this through behavior channels which take up opportunism as a means towards life-living. Such channels will preliminarily entail a universal working-time, neither minimizable nor extendable. All men must be occupied within preestablished systems during that time, the “reward” for which is their life-security. We would create no more problems than the absolute security of life-conditions would create - this is our goal. The whole experiment would rest on these grounds. We will, of course, require a common law and a court, a democratic organization, and enough land to house members. We would, indeed, be something like a commune. Our final goal, however, is that our experiment be universalized and surgically grafted onto business ontology as the very apex of that ontology. We differentiate ourselves from pre-Marxist communes according to this end goal - our belief that our commune exists not as one among many, but that it pushes forward that maniness through itself into its utmost contradiction, thereby demanding that maniness recreate itself around it. We burst through the bourgeois horizon on such terms.

¶11. We would want that money become “no object,” so that capital requirements would mean nothing for us. We would horde it, doling it out to members for life-secure purposes. We would use the blockchain for this, so that no oversight could crack under the pressure of the booty to be stolen. On these terms we would outstrip the market, for all men would be and have only what they need to live. All else would be a superfluity. Our organization would, in this way, decant the pure life-living from impure life-consuming, such that no labor nor consumption need be compelled out of a man. All men would do exactly as they need so that they could live exactly as they need. That is the view and aim.

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